


Paris

by Miss_M



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Assets & Handlers, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re called assets so Nicky won’t become accustomed to seeing them as human, or even as ‘her’ assets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> Proofread and Ameripicked by Lady_in_Red. I own nothing.

Nicky joined the CIA because her French professor and thesis advisor suggested it. It sounded livelier than law school, safer as a long-term career prospect than going into the private sector. The possibility of overseas work and the secrecy appealed to Nicky’s instinctual desire to stay back, watching, evaluating possibilities before she makes a choice. If she makes a choice. Patterns and outcomes have always been easier for her than forging human connections. 

Her last college boyfriend called her a cold fish and a lousy lay after she dumped him in favor of Chantilly. He was angrier than their relationship warranted, such as it was. It wouldn’t have survived graduation even had the pinnacle of Nicky’s ambition been a white lacy dress and a starter home in Arlington or Tacoma or Evanston. Her ex never understood that Nicky thrived on potential and had only let him pick her up at the Pi Delta Phi party junior year because having a boyfriend made it easier to blend in. Seeming to join in the social roundelay enabled Nicky to hold herself back.

She was too busy during training to devote much attention to her libido, and intimate relationships would have made everything unnecessarily complicated in her new job. Just as well she has the sort of face which makes men glance, then look closely, but rarely dare to approach. 

Her first assignment was at the Montreal field office, monitoring chatter from the far-right splinter groups of the Parti Québécois. It may have seemed like an inauspicious beginning, but Nicky was not bored at that or later posts. She did not need or want gunfights and car chases. The agents who went in for that sort of thing didn’t last long, tended to equate patriotism with being the loudest person in the room. They sneered a lot, laughed so you could see their molars, and didn’t even pretend they weren’t checking out Nicky’s ass when she was forced by social convention to share elevators with them. 

People at Langley took notice of Nicky in ways she had hoped they would. When Alex Conklin called her into his office and first mentioned the word ‘Treadstone,’ Nicky could feel it, like a tingle of static electricity at her fingertips: she’d made it.

Once installed in Paris, working out of a chicly shabby garret apartment, dressing in turtlenecks and tweed like the overly earnest student of Continental philosophy she was meant to be, Nicky quickly came to understand her assignment as a leap of faith. She had no choice but to trust the people providing her with intel, choosing the targets, placing her at the center of a delicate network kept secret from the Paris and other European field offices. Nicky leapt and hoped a soft landing had been prepared for her by powers beyond her control. 

That’s not to say Nicky trusted Conklin and his people any more than they trusted her. Those who started classes at Chantilly without already possessing a well-developed, healthy sense of paranoia, didn’t go far in the Agency or attain high security clearances. Nicky was not best pleased when she learned Operation Treadstone was already up and running by the time Conklin brought her on board, that all the assets had already taken out at least one target each, coordinated by Conklin himself. 

Nicky’s face belies her years and experience, but even so she felt nervous, intimidated _a priori_ before her first occasion having face time with one of the Treadstone assets. That slight tremor in her gut evaporated as soon as she was faced with the man, with any of them. Every four months, she retrieves her Eurail student pass from her bedside drawer, locks the equipment behind a thick wall of secrecy and the flimsy lock on her garret’s door, and sets off across Europe to run the usual battery of tests, fill out the questionnaires, and assess each asset’s suitability for the work. 

They’re called assets so Nicky won’t become accustomed to seeing them as human, or even as ‘her’ assets. She prefers to think of them as well-trained dogs in human form: aloof, sometimes fractious animals, who scan the street behind her rather than look her in the eye if she meets them in cafés and bars, or lean back with outthrust pelvises yet never make an effort to flirt with Nicky properly if she comes to their Agency-issued billets. Assets don’t have homes. 

They do have names – more names than Nicky’s had birthdays – as well as codenames. For her private mental roster, Nicky prefers to peg them by primary location and dominant accent when they speak English to her. 

Barcelona. English accent. No trouble looking Nicky in the eye from behind his purely decorative glasses. Cold eyes. They all have them, but this one’s the worst. 

Rome. Italian accent. He makes a perfunctory stab at making a pass. His national affiliation must require it. 

Hamburg. Ukrainian accent. He looks like he doesn’t sleep, but his bio specs come back within acceptable parameters. He doesn’t say one word more than he has to. 

Stockholm. Canadian accent veering toward Caribbean. Nicky makes a note to recommend the Agency send him training tapes and the chems which go with those. A wayward accent can kill a mission as quickly as poor planning.

Munich. Difficult to peg, not because he doesn’t have the accent down, but because he seems to hail from everywhere: there’s German, Czech, also some Hungarian in there. He smiles and looks Nicky up and down, but his demeanor is impeccably courteous while she asks him about sleep patterns, mood swings, the details of his cover. 

Paris. American accent. He scans the café and the street incessantly, as they all do, he couldn’t stop if he tried. Eyes like a pit bull. This one has trouble sleeping, he doesn’t have to say anything for Nicky to know. 

Paris can be a handful, no pun intended, but he’s efficient and reliable, and so Nicky doesn’t mind how handling him can leave her feeling bruised all over, unsettled in her routines. She doesn’t like needy men, so that can’t be why. She doesn’t need or want more, not from this man. In her line of work, other people are at best a dangerous distraction. 

Nicky suspects that the reason she oversteps the boundary with this one is not because she has a fondness for puppies or because his hands shake sometimes while he talks to her. It’s sheer proximity. They share a city.

Nicky wouldn’t call what evolves between them sharing, but it’s something. For herself, going solely by her taste and physical preference, she’d pick Munich. She doesn’t because he has eyes which could eat her alive, if she let him.

She knows Paris is no different from the others, despite how he sighs when Nicky rubs the back of his neck, where the hair is very short, like he used to be in the Army and some old habits are impossible to eradicate. She knows it’s for the best that they tacitly agree never to fall asleep together, after, lest either of them hear words spoken in sleep which would compromise them and the whole program. 

Nicky doesn’t call Paris anything to his face. He’s easier and, oddly, safer than picking up a man in a bar, keeping her cover story straight when all she wants to do is relax for an hour or two. She scratches Paris’ ears, and he paws at her.

Nicky gets back late, checks the perimeter, checks for messages from Langley before she showers and changes her clothes. Her cover is intact, and the last three hours are nothing she couldn’t give up without a flicker of regret, if need be. Tomorrow she will use the preset codes to inform Paris of an assignment in the south of France. 

Nicky is safe. She puts on her robe and reviews the operational parameters on the latest target, one Nykwanna Wombosi.


End file.
